About the client

Simply Asia is a South African restaurant and take-away franchise. The chain serves and delivers authentic Thai food in over 50 stores throughout South Africa and has a growing presence in Botswana and Zimbabwe. The business is modelled on the European noodle bar format, with colourful and modern in-store décor that has attracted a sophisticated clientele since 2003.

Simply Asia places a strong emphasis on the authenticity of their recipes and predominantly employs Thai chefs in order to retain strong cultural ties and provide consumers with a bona fide Thai food experience.

Overview

Kri8it worked in partnership with Simply Asia’s design and communications agency, Bittersuite – providing the digital and social media marketing expertise required to enhance the customer experience and build the brand across Simply Asia’s digital channels.

Website

Kri8it manages and maintains website content for Simply Asia, using the existing web platform and content management system. 2018 will see the introduction of many new digital platforms including a newly developed website for the group.

Kri8it has also developed specialised landing pages for Simply Asia’s digital and social media marketing campaigns, to convert customer interactions into leads for the business. These landing pages play a valuable role in lead generation by capturing visitor information using a simple, digital form and creating further opportunities for engagement.

Design

Kri8it has designed a wide range of artwork elements for the website, social media pages, landing pages and other digital channels – keeping the look and feel in line with the brand’s existing corporate identity, including colours, fonts and imagery, as developed by Bittersuite.

Social media

Kri8it has been running the Simply Asia South African Facebook page since February 2017. By October 2017, results included a dramatic 82% increase in the Facebook fan base through the attraction of over 26 000 new individuals, as well as an increased average daily reach resulting in almost 50K users and a constant, visible increase in engagement.

Some campaigns we have run and supported for Simply Asia on social media and via other digital communication platforms include:

Summerstrand store campaignA massive increase in awareness was generated around the launch of the take-away delivery offering for the Summerstrand store in Port Elizabeth. During the one-month campaign, a slideshow Facebook video generated over 11,500 video views and created a reach of over 21,000 people for an ad spend of just R1000. Advertising via the dark post format rather than an organic public post, Kri8it was able to monitor exactly who saw the advert and thereby exercise more control over the results.

UberEATS campaignThe objectives of the UberEATS campaign were to increase customer count, increase turnover on weaker trading days and increase the frequency of orders from existing customers. The marketing of the campaign was strategically targeted by the location of participating stores in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Using location filtering in Facebook’s advertising portal, only people active in locations 5kms from the selected stores were exposed to the campaign, thereby maximising the impact of the overall ad spend.During the campaign, a TV presenter and influencer by the name of Chanley Wong was employed to promote the specials on offer. Chanley promoted the brand’s marketing efforts using her personal social media channels to reach followers.

Win A Trip To Thailand, Winter, and EasyPoint campaignsDuring these digital marketing campaigns, a broad range of objectives was defined and achieved. Targeted mailouts generated click-through rates averaging almost double the global industry standard while maintaining lower than average CPM (cost per thousand) impressions rates. Objectives for the various campaigns included generating clickthroughs and engagement, cleaning up growing the database, growing engagement on the Simply Asia Facebook page, increasing customer count, turnover and order frequency and raising overall brand awareness.

We look forward to growing Simply Asia’s digital and social media presence even further in 2018.